Khan Academy’s Shortcut to Growth: The Trick Behind the Scenes
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Based in Mountain View, California, Khan Academy is a not-for-profit that produces and posts a vast collection of free educational online videos about math and science topics ranging from algebra and trigonometry to biology and economics.
Millions of students, educators, and self-learners around the world watch the videos, both on the Khan Academy’s YouTube channel and on its hugely popular website (www.khanacademy.org), where students answer some 1.5 million practice questions per school day. The Khan Academy development team continually tweaks the site based on how visitors choose to learn.
Challenge
Khan Academy’s beginnings date back to 2004, when Sal Khan’s cousin asked him to remotely tutor her daughter in math. Khan was happy to help and more than qualified, given his three MIT degrees and his Harvard MBA.
As more relatives and friends asked Khan for tutoring assistance, he began videotaping short lessons and posting them to YouTube. His knack for distilling complex concepts into easy-to-follow tutorials helped the videos go viral.
Sal knew he needed to offload the technical and maintenance concerns so he could work on what was important. To grow, it was important for him to be able to stop worrying about things like deployment issues and running his own server.
Ben Kamens, lead developer for Khan Academy
Khan maintained a website for his growing video library for several years, but the platform experienced limitations as traffic increased.
At the same time, media attention was growing, and technology industry leaders, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, began lending their support and evangelizing Khan’s mission and work. It was at this point that Khan quit his job as a hedge fund analyst to devote his full-time attention to the site’s growing potential.
“With Google App Engine, we don’t need a system administrator or anyone dedicated to deploying our app, so 99 percent of our time is spent working on our application,” says Ben Kamens, lead developer, Khan Academy.
“Sal knew he needed to offload the technical and maintenance concerns so he could work on what was important, which was to make more videos for the Khan Academy library,” explains Ben Kamens, lead developer for Khan Academy. “To grow, it was important for him to be able to stop worrying about things like deployment issues and running his own server.”
Solution
Khan Academy chose App Engine as its hosting and application development platform because App Engine could easily house its growing collection of 2,000-plus videos, resolving the organization’s overall server and maintenance issues with a single solution.
Using App Engine freed the team to focus on the user experience and the array of content that makes the academy such a powerhouse.
“A lot of what the Khan Academy is about is collecting data on student behavior so we can teach them better,” Kamens says. “Did they use a hint? Have they watched the video before? That data is being stored on Google App Engine so we can figure out what the most effective videos are, or where students struggle the most.”
Khan Academy provides individual profiles to students so they can analyze their learning progress, which means the organization needs systems running in the background to collect and track of all this data. Because App Engine takes care of server support, Khan Academy’s five developers can spend almost all of their time improving site functionality.
“If we didn’t have Google App Engine, we’d be spending a lot more time figuring out server setup and working on routers,” Kamens says. “Our ability to focus on the actual product is the benefit of Google App Engine.”
With the App Engine dashboard, which provides information like response time, uptime, and error rates, the development team also has an easy way to watch over site performance. “It lets us see what the average response time is, so we can keep it really low,” Kamens explains.
Results
During the US school year, Khan Academy receives more than 3.8 million unique visits a month — all served through App Engine. To support this much traffic, a typical company would need an internal system administration staff.
“With Google App Engine, we don’t need a system administrator or anyone dedicated to deploying our app, so 99 percent of our time is spent working on our application,” explains Kamens. “Our application lives on Google App Engine, and we bank all of our scalability and traffic concerns on Google App Engine. Even huge traffic spikes from Sal’s media appearances don’t worry us since we know that Google App Engine will handle the spike.”
Kamens also likes the fact that he and his team can turn to the Google App Engine support team for assistance when they need it. He also finds helpful tips on the Google App Engine blog.
The Khan Academy staff has come to completely rely on App Engine. “We are constantly using more of Google App Engine’s capabilities and have been happy with the performance,” Kamens says. “It’s nice to have an easy deployment process since we deploy the site on average at least once a day, [and] sometimes up to nine or 10 times [a day].”
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L’Oréal: Managing Big-data Complexity with Google Cloud
L’Oreal is a global company with a presence in 150 countries worldwide. Between managing all of its brands and requirements for different countries, L’Oreal looks to data to make insightful business decisions. How does L’Oreal unify its data across all its systems and databases? How does L’Oreal make the data accessible to thousands of employees? In this video, Antoine Castex, Enterprise Architect at L’Oreal, discusses with Martin Omander how L’Oreal built a serverless, multi-cloud warehouse based on Google Cloud.
Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
0:23 – Why does L’Oreal need a new data warehouse?
0:51 – Who is the L’Oreal group?
1:35 – Which systems does L’Oreal use?
2:14 – How does L’Oreal manage complexity?
3:59 – What is ELT?
4:57 – Who are L’Oreal’s data consumers?
5:41 – How L’Oreal built the data warehouse
8:51 – L’Oreal’s future plans
9:10 – Wrap up
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How APIs Helped PWC Open New Revenue Streams Using Existing Data
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PwC, one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, is well-known for professional services structured around auditing, insurance, tax, legal, and traditional management consulting. In Australia, the PwC Innovation and Ventures group has taken the global lead in building new, technology-based, turnkey lines of business outside of PwC’s traditional service areas. Applying its insights and knowledge base to the company’s vast amounts of existing data, PwC has uncovered new revenue models, distinct from its traditional, labor-intensive services.
Traditionally, people at PwC connected to critical data in response to scheduled tasks or crises in order to provide independent advice, often after the fact, when there’s little runway to make considered business decisions. The company wanted to move beyond the status quo, where people connected to static data and where benchmarking, deeper insights, and alerts were often an afterthought. Expertise gained from analyzing data and drawing valuable insights often was limited to individuals—it didn’t scale. PwC aimed to leap forward technologically and build utility and value for its customers through the development of a vibrant API-based ecosystem.
Innovation From Down Under
Australia is helping to lead the way at PwC from a software and development perspective. Early on, the Innovation and Ventures group decided to collaborate with PwC New Zealand, which leads the world in cloud general ledger adoption. The group represents the first with over 20% of its customer companies keeping their general ledgers in the cloud (that figure is currently around 35%), and serves as an early example of what can be achieved with APIs based on cloud general ledger data.
Accessing proprietary data (most significantly general ledger data), transforming it, and connecting it to an ecosystem of partners and clients via APIs, has quickly proved a winning formula for PwC, in the form of its Next platform, which combines multiple cloud accounting tools and integrated cloud applications in an open platform. It also includes customizable dashboards that provide a holistic view of a client’s entire portfolio, including business trends, in real time.
“By our very nature, we’re a people and services business, evolving into a data business. The biggest help that Apigee has provided in this transformation is in helping us expose core, rich data so that our people who provide services today can actually demonstrate value in the market tomorrow.”
— Trent Lund, PwC Australia
In developing the firm’s first technology products, PwC Australia’s Head of Innovation and Ventures Trent Lund was adamant that as an accounting firm, PwC never spend a dollar building something that technology professionals had already done better. That credo led Lund to select Google’s Apigee as PwC’s platform of choice for developing productized APIs.
Cloud-first Strategy
Increasingly, the datasets PwC wants to connect with are from public sources and open APIs coming from cloud providers. The Apigee toolset is perfectly positioned for Lund’s team’s focus on data connectivity—especially now that Apigee is part of Google, Lund says.
“The Apigee integration into Google is really helpful for us because we can connect in with that same ecosystem. Our team is relatively small by global standards, so we really don’t have time to try and foster multiple technology relationships,” Lund says. “We need to have deep, trusted relationships where we can get a level of sharing now and into the future, and that’s what we get with Apigee.”
PwC Australia continues to innovate and build the platform, but rather than continuing to pay for development from its local innovation fund, the platform is now funded globally so that it can be accelerated and shared across four countries. Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States are simultaneously guiding the platform’s requirements and features as PwC develops with an awareness of each country’s individual regulations.
For example, compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and China’s data residency rules would be far more complicated without a single technology partner like Apigee that experiences the same global challenges as part of Google, Lund says.
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The 2019 Accelerate State of DevOps Report confirms analyst reports that DevOps is crossing the chasm with the proportion of elite performers almost tripling compared to last year.
The report finds that delivering software quickly, reliably, and safely is at the heart of technology transformation and organizational performance. The report also finds that there’s a right way to handle the change approval process, and it leads to improvements in speed and stability and reductions in burnout.
Download this report and get:
- Insights on how to achieve elite performance in software development and delivery so you can deliver more value to your customers and stakeholders.
- Role of cloud computing in driving technology and organizational performance, with guidance on how to improve your use of the cloud.
- Smart ways to improve productivity and how the highest performers scale DevOps to maximize success.
Want to Code for the Cloud? Get Started with the Native App Development Track
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Earlier this year, we launched the Google Cloud skills challenge, which provides 30 days of free access to training to build your cloud knowledge and an opportunity to earn skill badges that showcase your Google Cloud competencies. Today, we’re adding a Native App Development track to the skills challenge, joining the Getting Started, Data Analytics, Kubernetes, Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tracks.
The Native App Development track is designed for cloud developers who want to learn to build serverless web apps and Google Assistant applications on Google Cloud using Cloud Run and Firebase. Specifically, you’ll have an opportunity to earn three skill badges in the Native App Dev track: Serverless Firebase Development, Serverless Cloud Run Development, and Build Interactive Apps with Google Assistant. To earn a skill badge, you complete a series of hands-on labs and take a final assessment challenge lab to test your skills.
Here’s an overview of each badge.
Serverless Firebase Development
To earn this skill badge, you’ll learn how to build serverless web apps, import data into a serverless database, and build Google Assistant applications using Firebase, Google’s backend-as-service platform for creating mobile and web applications.
Serverless Cloud Run Development
For this badge, you’ll discover how to use Cloud Run, a fully managed serverless platform, to connect and leverage data stored in Cloud Storage. You’ll learn how to use Cloud Run to build a resilient, asynchronous system with Pub/Sub, build a REST API gateway as well as build and expose services.
Build Interactive Apps with Google Assistant
To earn the final skills badge, you’ll build Google Assistant applications by creating a project in the Actions console, integrating Dialogflow, testing your action in the Actions simulator, and adding Cloud Translation API to your assistant application.
Ready to jump into the skills challenge? Sign up here.
You can also check out this quick video below to learn how to join the skills challenge.
Google Maps Platform Can Elevate FinTech Experience with Less Risks and Higher Security
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The financial services industry is changing—an estimated $68 trillion in wealth transferring from baby boomers to millennials.1 This means financial service providers will have to deliver the speed, ease-of-use, technological sophistication, and tailored services that millennials have come to expect. In fact, half of all millennials are willing to switch to a competing institution if it offers a better digital experience.2 This and many other trends are driving unprecedented growth for mobile Fintech experiences in banking, digital payments, financial management and insurance.3
Google Maps Platform financial services solutions
To help you respond to customer’s changing demands, we’re launching financial services solutions that can help you improve your customer experience, security and operations. We’ve outlined the technical guidance and APIs you need to build out three financial services solutions: Enriched Transactions, Quick and Verified Sign-up, and Branch and ATM Locator Plus. We’ve also highlighted two use cases that customers are using our APIs to solve: Contextual Experiences and Fraud Detection.
Clarify financial statements with Enriched Transactions solution
Transaction statements are often hard for customers to understand, using abbreviations like “ACMEHCORP” instead of customer-facing names like “Acme Houseware”. Our Enriched Transactions solution clarifies these transactions and makes them instantly recognizable by adding the merchant name and business category, a photo of the storefront, its location on a map, and full contact info. Making transactions easier to recognize not only boosts consumer confidence, with reported increases in NPS of 15% or higher, but decreases costly support calls by approximately 67%.4
In addition, you can help customers easily visualize a series of transactions by adding the merchant name to the transaction amount and date, and displaying their transactions on a Google map. This enables you to give customers insights about where and how they spend money. See the guide to implement Enriched Transactions today.
Enable faster sign-up with Quick and Verified Sign-up solution
Manually entered addresses can lead to lowered conversions, erroneous customer data, and costly delivery mistakes. Our Quick and Verified Sign-up solution makes sign-up faster, suggesting nearby addresses with just a few thumb taps—cutting sign-up time by up to 64% and increasing conversion rates by up to 15%.5
The solution also provides one additional level of address verification that helps reduce the risk of fraudulent account sign-ups—and companies have decreased fraudulent account setups by approximately 30% through using geospatial data to verify customer identities.4 See the Quick and Verified Sign-up solution guide to get started today.
- Faster sign-ups 1An application form requires an address
- Faster sign-ups 2Autocomplete quickly suggests addresses
- Faster sign-ups 3Select the address with visual confirmation
- Faster sign-ups 4Address verification options are presented
- Faster sign-ups 5Location permission is granted by the user
- Faster sign-ups 6The address is verified
Help customers visit you with Branch and ATM Locator Plus solution
74% of customers now search for specific details prior to their visit, which makes detailed, accurate profiles for each location a must.5 Our Branch and ATM Locator Plus solution enhances your own websites and apps with the same information shown about your branches and ATMs on Google Maps. Include hours of operation, available services, user reviews, photos of the location, driving directions and more.
Financial services companies using geospatial data to provide additional information (e.g. opening hours, available services, etc.) on branch and ATM services have seen a 14% increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS), and a 7% decrease in customer support calls.4 Implement Branch and ATM Locator Plus today using the guide or build it in minutes with Quick Builder.
- ATM locator 1Customers can enable location permissions, or enter their address
- ATM locator 2Quickly enter the address with Autocomplete
- ATM locator 3Nearby location listings, ranked by distance and ETA
- ATM locator 4Map view and directions
Enable offers and rewards with Contextual Experiences
Real-time, geo-targeted offers can power deals, rewards, and cash-back programs—all visualized with rich Google Maps. By combining the insights of purchase histories with customer opt-in to location-based features, companies can implement the Contextual Experiences use case to enable personalized offers and rewards programs that drive engagement with brands while putting money in customers’ pockets at the same time.This is a win for banks and their customers, validated by encouraging metrics like NPS rating boosts of 8% or higher, and an increase of 8% or more time spent in-app.4 Learn how Current uses Google Maps Platform to create innovative customer rewards programs with location intelligence.
Detect suspicious transactions with Fraud Detection
With the Fraud Detection use case, companies can use customer opted-in mobile device location to flag suspicious activity based on geographic distance, such as an ATM withdrawal that is far from the customer’s phone. Our APIs can also help companies recognize suspicious transaction patterns such as a purchase made at a location that is physically distant from a recent transaction.
Financial services companies that use geospatial data to verify customers’ identities have reduced fraudulent transactions by approximately 70%, and false positives in fraud detection by 45%, on average.4 Learn how Starling Bank uses Google Maps Platform to enable real-time notification of transactions and their locations, and enhance data-driven decision-making.
Start elevating customer experiences, reducing risk and increasing efficiency today with our financial services offerings. Visit our financial services solutions page to learn more about how to start implementing these solutions.
For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.
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